2 - Causation Rules in National Courts

Summary

National courts have generally embraced a multifold account for causation in virtually all Member States. However, the different national tort law systems structure the multi-stage accounts differently. National judges enforce competition law rules largely relying on their domestic laws of obligations. For this reason, this chapter examines the bundle of tort law and competition law that applies to establish causation in competition damages actions before national courts of England, Germany, France and Italy. These four jurisdictions were selected because of the size of their economies, the amount of litigation and the fact that they show four different, almost paradigmatic, approaches to causation.